“You smell like a bar” is rarely a compliment. The comment conjures the smell of half-lit cigarettes and cheap beer, not swanky cocktails and classy cologne. But what if you could smell like one of the best bars in America: where the drinks are less, well, well and more world-renowned; where broken barstools give way to swanky booths?
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Cue Death & Company, a cocktail bar with locations in New York, Los Angeles and Denver, which just dropped a trio of scents made in collaboration with de Kloka, a California perfumery founded by ex-bartender Jackie Brenner. Death & Co, as it’s colloquially called, is a mainstay on The World’s 50 Best Bars list and actually won the award for Best American Cocktail Bar and World’s Best Cocktail Menu at 2010’s Spirited Awards, an international affair hosted by Tales of the Cocktail.
And the cocktail bar produced an encyclopedic “cookbook” filled with recipes, origin stories and tons of original photography, which earned a James Beard award for Best New Cocktail or Spirits Book. You see, the company has grown quite a bit since the first Death & Co opened in 2007, and, as such, so has its retail arm, the Death & Company Market.
In it, you’ll find glassware and bar tools, but also these new colognes, which are as much merch as they are a new endeavor altogether.
“Capturing the essence of the Death & Co bar experience in perfume form was a sensory adventure down memory lane for me,” Brenner says. “I tapped into all my past experiences in the bar world, the different sensations of sitting at Death & Co, and the smells and textures they bring forth. All three perfumes share a handful of common ingredients – saffron, cardamom, coffee, and sweet incense. These core ingredients capture the Death & Co spirit and carry a cohesiveness through each perfume.”
Sure, each scent smells slightly different, but they’re all based on Death & Co bars, which bear similarities, of course. Subtle twists separate them: in the case of the Denver cologne, there’s a touch of mountain pine; for New York, Brenner played on the aroma of vermouth, a key ingredient in a number of classic cocktails; and for L.A., she mixes the glamour Hollywood with the area’s fresh citrus supply.
